


paris, timeless

by citadelofswords



Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, M/M, POV Second Person, e remembers more than he would like to admit, it's not really an alternate universe when it's very very canon compliant BUT, r remembers everything, reincarnation all the same, there are tears
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-05
Updated: 2014-02-05
Packaged: 2018-01-11 06:59:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1170055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/citadelofswords/pseuds/citadelofswords
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Too little, too late; your body is riddled through with bullets and you reawaken, back at the beginning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	paris, timeless

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [Paris, Timeless](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1253695) by [kiii17](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kiii17/pseuds/kiii17)



Paris, 1832. It is the first time you are yourselves, but in no way is it the last.

You remember it every single time, because every time you find your faith at the last possible second. Too little, too late; your body is riddled through with bullets and you reawaken, back at the beginning.

You aren’t trapped in a loop. You’re being reincarnated as yourself, over and over again. You drown your memories of the golden god in alcohol. Then you reunite and you fight, fight, fight against the adoration, the reverence, the love you feel and will always feel. At the last second, you rediscover your faith. Then your body is riddled with bullets and you reawaken at the beginning.

You’ve died for him before. You just don’t realize that Patroclus is you, that Pylades is you, that Hephaestion is you. You have been connected in this way since the dawn of time, but not once do you ever survive.

You die every time, but every time is different. The first time, your god searches for your hand with a smile. But in a number of the barricades that follow, you die separated by a wall of wood. 

Every time after the first time, you ask to share a drink with your friends one more time, before the dawn rises on what you know is their last day. Every time you do, the reaction is different. The first couple of times, he stares at you. The first time he takes you by the arm, to stop you from limping away, you stare into those large eyes for a long time. This one isn’t golden. But he is still a god. And he looks as though he is about to say something.

He nods at you. You allow yourself, just this once, to touch his face with your hand and clap his shoulder. You don’t even try to pull away, and he doesn’t push you away. That time, being separated from him is particularly painful. The next drink you ask of them, you stare right at him as you ask for that one last drink, and he must understand, because when someone presses the bottle into his hands… he gives it back.

And then he’s there, and you want to scream and curse him out for the pure concern and caring in his eyes. _You’re going to die tomorr_ ow, you want to say, but he knows already, they all know already, even if they don’t remember the last thirteen times. You do the only thing you can do- you let go of everything, and allow yourself, this once, to act, and you surge upwards to cling to him.

He hesitates for merely a moment and then his arms are gripping you just as tightly, and his fingers are carding through your hair, and you have to push him away because you  _can’t actually do this, oh God_. He lingers at your side for a moment, his hand never leaving your shoulder, and then it cradles the back of your head again and he presses your foreheads together and every nerve in your body sings at the contact. And then he leaves, but he hesitates for a moment as he gets up, and the hole in your heart expands and makes it difficult to bear.

Your heart screams in anguish when you watch him die on the barricade that time. The next time, he climbs up with the flag in hand, and they have to hold you back to prevent you from climbing up with him. You’re screaming for him to  _get down, get down, oh God oh God_ , but he doesn’t listen to you and he falls. Stubborn, stubborn god.

There is one time where you step over the bodies of your friends to join him. He’s golden, but not quite. He doesn’t find your hand, he doesn’t smile, you don’t say anything, you don’t even look at each other once you’ve turned to face the guards, he just lifts his hand with the flag clasped under his fingers, but when your eyes meet over the shoulders of four men with rifles trained on him… well, the words all there, and they’re more than you could ever say, more than a simple hand hold could communicate. You die together, mirroring the first time for the first time, and you know, even as you die, that the next time will be different, that the end is near.

You reawaken in a world where the pants are tighter and the machinery roams the streets instead of staying locked up in a factory. You’re at university and he’s golden again, the curls are as perfect as the very first time. You fight, but there is something underneath, and you bring him back to your apartment after one particularly nasty winter’s day because his is on the other side of town from the café, the idiot.

He knocks over a statue and a stack of papers and you freeze as you realize that the papers he’s trying to pick up and stack together are the sketches. Every single barricade, every single death, ever single incarnation of him, all of it, scratched onto paper in insomnia-based frenzies. It keeps the memories out of your nightmares. And you’re scrambling to pick up the sketches, because thank God the racy ones are locked away and he will never see them, it’s not even like he can recognize himself, they all look so different, when a hand lands on your wrist and you freeze.

There are tears in his eyes as he stares at you.  _How many times_ , he says,  _how many times did you_ , and then he chokes and your hands fly to his face.  _Too many_ , you choke out _, and you never remembered any of them, no one did, we just kept_  dying.

This is the first time that he kisses you, and even though it’s uncoordinated and frantic, you think about how much you have suffered for this, how many bullets pierced your flesh for this one moment.

That time is the last time you remember and you still don’t survive. You find your faith and he finds his soul, and when you die it’s an accident, and if you reawaken you don’t remember it; your consciousness which has lingered on the Earth for so long has reached Elysium. It doesn’t matter.

But you and he will continue. Your story never ends. There will always be you and him, and there will always be a war or a protest or a revolution. You will always fight; you will never agree. You will drink your cares and your faith away and he will grow exasperated with you and your cynicism. And you will always find your faith and he will always find his soul, at the very last possible second, and you never, never once, survive.

**Author's Note:**

> I needed to get out my feelings about all the interpretations, and what better way to do it than through truly gut-wrenching reincarnation fic? It hurt to write this. A lot. [This](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4z7loNm_kw) was basically the soundtrack for the last half.


End file.
